Working on the railroad

IT IS 11 o’clock at night, and a dozen men are loading shovels and picks onto a trolley by the West Coast mainline. Two miles up the line, other workers have dug a hole under a portion of the track. Some have set out safety notices and flashing lights, and disconnected the signalling and overhead wires. With everybody, including your correspondent, wearing lights on their helmets, the night-time work can seem “a little like mining”, says Ben Brooks of Network Rail, the owner of Britain’s tracks. Unlike that industry, though, railway repair is thriving.

Built in the mid-19th century by a group of intrepid engineers and canny Midlands businessmen, the West Coast mainline connects five big cities: London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow. It is the busiest mixed-use railway in Europe—beneficiary of a British railway boom that has seen passenger journeys rise by 50% in ten years. Over a third of all British freight transported by rail travels on the line. Network Rail estimates it will be full by the middle of the next decade. The crush on the line, and the large cost of repairing it, is one of the justifications for an entirely new line, HS2, which would run a little to the east.